Better ideas for Generations

Agreed. Much better expenditure than the boating scene, and much better way to establish the crew as awesome ass-kickers.

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And efficient at their job. When you get rid of an action scene but still say it happened, you wind up having the Enterprise arrive at the station after the battle and only rescuing the villain. Kind of sad when you compare that to the opening of the movie where Kirk successfully rescues a stranded ship and sacrifices his life to save the Enterprise B.

To me it sounds like the studio put some requirements and requests on the writing team that they were unable to put successfully in a coherent story.

If they hadn't had the requirement to include 10 minutes of TOS at the beginning or for Shatner to have a 'meaningful' role then may have been able to have a good movie there. Who knows.

The TNG production team were forced to include elements from a series they didn't respect (TOS) who they didn't understand or want to understand and ended up with me having to watch Kirk dying on a bridge after a fight with two other old men. All the good characterisation that Picard had earned up to that point was wasted and he ended up looking lame.

If I could travel back in time, I'd give Michael Jan Friedman's novel Crossover to Moore and Braga for them to adapt, transplanting the "Kirk dies on the Ent-B" opening into the new script, and tell them to have Kirk show up throughout the film though flashbacks and as a mental image/internal voice advising Scotty, Bones, and Spock.

I'd probably have to show them Generations twice first - once on its own and once with their commentary.

Well, the most obvious change would be Kirk's death. He should have died heroically on the bridge of a starship saving everyone. Ironically, George Kirk's death at the beginning of Star Trek 2009 is exactly how I would have wanted Kirk to die, heroic self-sacrifice while commanding a starship. Instead, he dies pathetically with only one other person around, who buries him in a shallow grave on a barren planet, and never mentions him again. He didn't even get the honor of a Starfleet military funeral like Spock did in WOK or Pike in STID. And the worst part of it is that the death of James T. Kirk is treating almost as an afterthought in the film. It was disrespectful to such an iconic character (even Malcolm McDowell thinks so).

I always think that there is the nugget of a good film in there, but it’s still got a load of crap stuck onto it. It really feels about 2 drafts from finished to me. So, I’d maybe change the following things:

· Loose the comedy and the emotion chip plot line. Loose it. It’s there to contrast with Picards grief and it’s unnecessary. The gags are forced and feel out of place, and Brent Spiner is not, despite what he believes, the world’s greatest actor. Data is best (and often funniest) when he is being normal TNG Data.

Keep Picards grief though, he needs it, and it’s one of the good ideas in the movie, if a little contrived. Also make him pick up the kerlenesksa at the end, him dropping it always pisses me off

· I’d also have ditched the Worf promotion scene. Again, I don’t care, it adds nothing to the plot and it obviously cost a shed load of cash that could have been spent on other things. Like making a good movie perhaps. Why did they set up Worf at the beginning then just have him looking dumb or holding a torch in the rest of the film. Stupid, lazy writing.

· Actually kill Kirk on the Enterprise B. Make him a ghost or something in the Nexus, and loose Echo-Guinan. Why not have Picard really broken by Soren, maybe even tortured. Then he goes to the Nexus, realises it’s all fake without insulting the audience, and wanders off, finding Kirk. Kirk persuades him to fight the good fight and then Picard, reenergised goes and defeats Soren. So Kirk dies a meaningful death on the E-B, he gets closure (some sort of heavenly existence for eternity) and Picard (i.e. TNG) saves the day.

You can keep the launch bit, but make it slightly less clichéd (e.g. no “only ship in the sector/quadrant/whatever” etc.)

· Picard should defeat Soren in a less dumb way than a punch up (or not, that bit is optional).

· Tighten up the scientific knowledge in the film – Star Trek fans are known for being both intelligent and anal. This film looks like it’s written for stupid kids sometimes

· Tidy up Soren. Make him a better bad guy. Make me care about him killing 3 million people who we have never heard of and don’t ever see. He was just a weak character and a waste of a good actor. I agree that the Romulans would have made more sense and probably a better movie. And why did he kidnap Geordie? Sure, it makes sense after the event, but was the VISOR thing his plan? He obviously didn’t need to know about trilithium as he’d just used it on Amagosa. The character and his actions make no sense.

You can read Brannon Braga interviews in the old Sci-Fi Universe mag, or some of his posts on the old AOL Star Trek boards.

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He did (and does) have quite the potty-mouth. I actually prefer it when the creative types don't pretend to adore the fans. I think it's very condescending, and they're not very good at it, anyway. That's the actors' job.

The whole premise of Soren's plot seems ridiculous--not least because it gives the ST universe a weapon that can destroy stars! C'mon, and they're worried about the Borg after that?

So drop that. Since some folks so want the idea of "passing the torch" do it some other way. Theme of death? Okay, begin with Admiral McKoy's funeral, where Picard can have a talk with Ambassador Spock. But it isn't just a cameo. Spock has also been asked to brief Picard about a strange event--the truth behind the death of Admiral James T. Kirk...

Essentially this would entail something about an experiment involving an alien device found on the planet Alpha Omega VI, one of only three planets Starfleet is forbidden to visit. Now the Enterprise D must do so, because the device has become active again.

We have a flashback to Admiral Kirk among those visiting the archeologists on Alpha Omega VI, amid weird ruins and wierder tech. What seems to be a key of some kind activates, with an energy field that reaches out and seemingly disintegrates Kirk and the planet's moon! Sensor analysis indicates all three were displaced in time.

En route to Alpha Omega VI, the crew examines the logs and sensor readings. Data agrees with one particular theory, that some ancient race was trying to find a way to exist outside of time, to achieve immortality.

When the Enterprise D reaches its destination, they find space itself upset. Time is becoming unglued. They need to find a way to turn this off somehow, but while on the planet Kirk appears! He agrees to help them, noting he feels increasingly alive by the life-or-death situation. While the crew on ship have to deal with problems in space (like the sudden re-appearance of a moon), the Away Team with Kirk have to find a way to turn the machine off at the source. Ultimately, Kirk sacrifices himself to accomplish this.

Wasn't one of the original ideas for GEN was to have the TOS crew vs TNG crew.

I for one love seeing old people fight.

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That's the comic book formula. Two heros fight then join up to beat a nobody of a villain. I would have liked to have seen that still. My concept is that a large Vengeance type ship has a massive bridge with room for both crews to inhabit and interact.

Baddy is dealt with, but a Yesterdays Enterprise scenario follows where the 1701-A goes back to its death, and we see the Enterprise B launch with all new kids--no veterans.

And it is Kirk, not Picard who talks about how we hear of History not forgetting the name Enterprise.

But here is the kick. The 1701-A was sent back to rescue folks from the Nexus and was destroyed there.

I think the idea of "the crews of the Enterprise fight!" would be welcomed now, but in the context of the time I'm not sure they felt that audiences would buy it. The 'comic book mentality' to scripting still hadn't really taken hold in Hollywood in the early nineties, unlike today where the lines have definitely blurred towards that kind of more dynamic, comic book way of being able to find a justification for anything.